Defining Policy Issues & Goals:
By: Andrew Cottingham
December 2025
Political parties and candidates often confuse issues with goals, mistakenly treating them as the same. We believe that it is essential to distinguish clearly between the two.
Our Definitions:
– Issues are problems needing to be fixed
– Policies are solutions for the issues
– Policy goals (solutions) answer the major issues (problems)
– A platform is a short list of policy goals on important issues.